The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  But how did one wish the unimaginable? He dragged Cretus with him, wishing . . . what did he want? To communicate? To whom? Who was available? Some Home-planet Spsom Communcations relay team? A tramp freighter across the universe? Cretus, overlooking Meure’s memories, suggested, Try Thlecsne Ischt, the warship. We could use fire-power, and rations for the long furry one. His kind will . . .

  Meure concurred, wished, tried. Will and Idea.

  Cretus wished, too. They made an effort, together.

  Then they heard voices. No, not voices. Meure’s mind substituted voices for what he was sensing. It, they, were not voices, but raw thought-stuff, but with no soft edges. It was precision, steely, ruthless, all-powerful; and once connected, grew stronger without effort on his part. Will and Idea.

  Something was waking up.

  He/They heard: Threshold attained, empathy index 7A4X551 AT& (a string of symbols totally meaningless to Meure, so his mind substituted a coded number in place of the reality, which was untranslatable) require adjust to #*+555DF$aa-3—feasible, now executing synchrony, to contact unit 9923 A445-F, initiation will commence upon attainment of level A ...

  There was no pain, no fear, no foreknowledge. Instantly, both Meure Schasny and Cretus the Scribe ceased, ended, terminated, and to themselves, vanished.

  14

  “The idea of the Universe in the mind of a modern mathematician is singularly reminiscent of the ravings of William Blake.”

  —A.C.

  THESIS, ANTITHESIS, SYNTHESIS. A persona was formed who did not exist before, but yet who possessed two complete memories of all events perceived by those two persons who went into its formation; to it, there was no break in continuity, no sense of change, abrupt or otherwise, but the natural culmination of events. In the same sense that it was quite neither Cretus nor Meure, it was also both of them, combined. At the first, it was not particularly conscious of a named-identity for itself, but it was totally aware that it was a unique being, possibly with unique powers. And where before the two had suspected a great Game being played out far above them, on the borders of perception, this new persona suddenly perceived the whole Game, the players, and dealt itself into a hand, all in the single first instant of its existence. It became aware. And simultaneously became something to become aware of.

  There was no time to waste; these first moments required realization, but more, action and initiatives based on that realization. These things had to come before naming.

  He saw a room in a pestilential city on the planet Monsalvat, dimly, as a faded hologram. There were concerned people there, people who were entangled with him intricately, who were afraid that they had set something in motion to cause harm. Yes, harm. There would be change, and it would be seen by some as negative, a change in state.

  He was, in the primal perception, aware of the vast network across the universe maintained by the Spsom-Vfzyekhr gestalt: a four-dimensional continuum of glowing nodes spread across the darkness. But there was, of course, much more. Entities, beings, odd composite sapient forms . . . some contact was possible, he could see, and between other sets, antipathies. Space was distorted from what he thought it would seem like in this projection. Things did not fit, here, their distances in light-years. His target contact, for example, aboard the Spsom Warship Thlecsne Ishcht, in flight between the stars, which showed as dull pockmarks, had a shimmering quality, as if its place were somehow indistinct. There, but not now, really. Other places-points showed a specificity, a hard glitter. Far away, so it seemed, there was an odd pattern, unique. He could focus on it, examine it in detail, just by wishing it so: it was uncontestably alien. Alien to him, and alien to the norms of the network he had tapped into. Something was wrong (?), malfunctioning (?), contrary-to-expected-progressions (?). Moreover, it was aware of him, and moving sluggishly with a sideways-sliding motion which he could not translate into the physical world of human bodies. It moved, in this perception, but he sensed or guessed that it did not move at all, physically. But however it occurred, he was aware that it intended to threaten him.

  He had Thlecsne Ishcht. To the transponder-entity aboard, he sent, Bring the ship to Monsalvat and do what is necessary to rescue the survivors of Ffstretsha. And subdue a hostile entity which has been preying on the people of this planet.

  Thlecsne answered, We come in strength, and are prepared for violence. As before when we tried to approach, we are experiencing flight difficulty. This time we are stressed for it.

  He: I will attempt to weaken that influence. It is caused. You are part of this network; it is the alien presence at coordinates 23@¢#+667, which is either on this world or immediately adjacent to it.

  The presence aboard Thlecsne Ishcht sent back: You are seeing at magnitude G. We cannot perceive at that level. All we see are the other Spsom points, indistinct patchy areas, and you. You are not Spsom. What are you, and how did you tap into the Vfzyekhr network?

  He said: I/We are/were Human. I now, under this method of data transmission, appear to have gained a single nature, but I do not know what that nature is, nor if it is lasting. I am now going to a higher level, to contact an alien entity threatening our mutual effort. You must take all Spsom terminals off this network for a time, as there is perceptual danger to your system. Have your Vfzyekhr use pattern 2#3, shadowing and filtration applicable. If I do not recontact you, enter this planetary system and destroy the entity. The Vfzyekhr can locate it.

  Now he broke contact with the Thlecsne Ishcht, and tuned his Vfzyekhr contact up into a higher band, higher, higher still. It protested, like long-disused machinery, being forced into configurations close to the limits of its own parameters. He sensed, far back in the Vfzyekhr collective consciousness, a protest. But it responded. They responded. The Spsom gestalt vanished, and was replaced by other receptions he did not understand, or could not resolve enough to comprehend. The universe was full of aware, communicating entities. And the Vfzyekhr were his only key to it.

  His target entity now became the center of attention, and as he progressed up the abstraction ladder, he found he could begin to understand it. But perception and understanding, in this conceptual universe, involved contact, and interaction. There was great danger now of losing . . . what? Losing his nerve, and being subsumed into the entity now facing him with calculating malevolence.

  Far back in one of the two life-lines he possessed, there had been a contact with a projection of this entity; that had held a superstitious quality, a dreamlike unreality, a tentative instability. Contact now differed greatly; the entity existed, if the word could be used at all, on a conceptual, communicative plane. It had roots in physical reality, but they were tenuous, deceptive, almost invisible, after the fashion of fungi. And inasmuch as the visible part of the fungus was only a fruiting body thrown out by the real structure of subsurface filaments, so then the physical manifestations of the entity on Monsalvat were not the thing itself, but contact-bodies, temporary sensors, communicative devices grown by an advanced colony organism to interact with creatures it deemed primitive and inferior.

  That much he could not directly perceive; what he could not translate was where it was in what little physical body it had left.

  Of course not, it broadcast at him. And in that directed communication he realized again the danger he was in, for if Monsalvat was within the influence of the entity, here, within a communications concept, he was existing within its proper domain. He felt single and whole, but at the same time the echoes of Cretus and Meure, the old individuals, still rang, and of course there was the Vfzyekhr, whose amplification powers made this contact possible. They together were a shaky threefold organism, held together by a Vfzyekhr performing near its limits, while the entity was . . . he strained to focus down, to see . . . thousands, no, millions of units, no, more than that, linked, interconnected. And those parts were not individual wills, with their own conceptual lives to match against one another, but fitted parts, each smoothly matched into the enormous construct of the
whole.

  At last, it sent, I can speak directly with one I labored over so long to bring back from the house of the dead.

  The Meure portion contributed, And also one whom you brought from afar to serve as a new container for the Cretus you brought back. But neither of us has gratitude for what you have done to us, or to the people on Monsalvat.

  It replied, What of that? Even artificial and temporary as you are now, you have attained an exalted state; in that, you will come to comprehend that when you become as I am, you live through the actions of others. Animals are unsatisfactory, because they have no idea of Time. Likewise, organisms similar to me have the power to be aware of me, resist me, perhaps attack me. No, the men of Monsalvat, full of glorious passions, hates, revenges, detestations they were both convenient, and at the perfect state of intelligence. Loneliness and boredom increase with awareness. Physical limitations hamper the climb into this state, so they become reduced, so one can reach farther and farther . . . no, We’ll not give up on Monsalvat. All those knives, and so handy to use. No, that won’t change. And since you couldn’t come to me physically even if you knew where my basic units were, there’s little enough you can do to change things.

  He sent, What about me/us, then?

  The transfer didn’t work, and the two of you were stuck in Limbo. Now, to contact me, you have further integrated with another being; this process is not reversible. As for the entity you have become, I have no use for that; you are aware of me. You will have to adjust to your new state . . .

  What are you?

  A community, a colony, a gestalt . . . long ago, very long ago, I was made up of units who had individual wills . . .

  Humanoid?

  Not particularly. Although my units had bones, organs, limbs and all require appurtenances. Life follows basic patterns; only the details vary. But the universe has physical limits. The only way around these limits is to stop trying to beat them in their own domains. To see, to realize, is all. It is not necessary to actually go to a planet to perceive it . . . and once we understood what we had to do, we started it in process. We took control of our planetary ecology, to tune it perfectly to us, and we undertook to guide our ongoing evolution into forms that would maximize the intercommunication and reduce the friction of individual wills. This goal was attained before your planet, the home of Man, had life forms.

  He asked, You say we and I. Which is it, properly?

  How interesting! No contact body ever asked before. It is both, of course. I do not exist in the physical universe; we are an assembly of creatures which can be seen, felt, weighed, measured, and anything else one would care to perform upon them. In fact, it is possible for entities such as myself to . . . transfer to another base population, where conditions permit. This is the only sort of long-range mobility I have. We, as we are now, have none, except local movements on the planetary surface.

  You have not done so . . .

  No. But it would cause problems. The base population would lose me; this is a form of budding, where the bud is the continuation form and the stock is the infant. The base population would retain the physical base of an entity like myself, and would grow another. Such a creature would not share my learned cautions.

  And you want no competition. Obvious and understandable.

  You, it said, are a creature of movement, which means you are immobile with respect to Time. Conditions are reversed with forms like myself. My intent, as you would translate it, for Monsalvat, is to transfer my selfness there once the base population has reached a certain level . . . they would be space-mobile, under my guidance, and then I will be mobile in both realms.

  (Aha, he thought. It’s not on Monsalvat, because it said, “transfer my selfness there.”) And he said, Spread and multiply?

  No, came the answer. Once transfer was done, we’d eliminate the old base population, and travel together . . . density to a certain level is a requisite of this kind of existence.

  (Aha, again, he thought, shielding the idea. It has to have a large population, probably confined to a single planet. Otherwise it would have already invested Monsalvat. At least with a beachhead.) Why move?

  The long view of time. Stellar systems eventually lose their habitability to any life-form. I shall be forced to leave this system in order to continue . . . I had quite given up hope until the Klesh came.

  (Now he thought deeply. Why did it have to have a Human-Klesh vector?) You control an entire ecology, an evolutionary sequence; re-evolve your original host population.

  All life forms, however powerful, have limits. That is one of mine. I can make forms coalesce, and specialize them, but I cannot renew to the old form, or evolve forward. You would call my host form so highly evolved as to be degenerate, a side-branch. I cannot make marble, only make statues of what marble I find. My Hosts, we are individually small creatures, grass and seed eaters, who are the distant descendants of what I might call “Stem Epiprimates,” somewhat better integrated than the creators of the Klesh.

  But you’ll be coming down, to transfer here, to the Klesh . . .

  True. But I won’t let them go so far, either. They’ll retain an ability to make technology, so we can move . . .

  He said, That’s like the transfer you did with Cretus-me.

  Cretus was an experiment, that’s true. I discovered him in Time, and laboriously tracked him down in space. And you, too, after others failed.

  Have you thought that the same thing could happen again? That the Klesh-Monsalvat host might possess some concealed, untested strength? That it could turn on you and exploit you, with your knowledge of Time, your ability to move in its medium? I cannot see any beneficial effects of such an entity. It would impose change upon the universe in the same sense that I am going to impose change upon the Klesh . . .

  What kind of change? There was a note of alarm in its contact, now.

  To start with, I’ll make them immune to you. Human legend is filled with the fear of demons. You’ll do, well enough, although you’re not exactly what I have always had in mind . . .

  And for the first time, the eagerness for contact which had characterized the entity was gone. He probed, he listened, he searched. But for a time, there was silence, darkness.

  He ventured, I see . . . things like you were what we called demons. But those attempts never worked, or. . . .

  It responded, No or. They never worked. I know. I have seen. Transfer has never been done successfully. It’s always been tried from too great a physical distance . . . they were running out of time on their origin-worlds and had no nearby possible host.

  One race turned back from what you are, a third part of him contributed.

  More than one, it answered. Those I have seen as well. One of them is now the switching part of your collective entity. But they had my experience to draw on, and they saw before their forms were past the evolutionary point of no return. We had contact, ago as you would say it, there as I would say it.

  What was another?

  Those whose ship brought you here.

  Ths Spsom?

  Indeed the Spsom. They feared amalgamation more than the Vfzyekhr, and so in time they forgot it . . . until they met the Vfzyekhr, and enough remained to key the association. By forming the communications network they do together, they mutally protect one another from going further again along that path of development.

  What of Humans; of Ler; of Klesh?

  The situation will seem paradoxical to you, so I will explain: all sentient populations develop toward unity. That process is an analogue of the way individual cells become multicellular creatures. So much is the general rule. There are exceptions. The Ler do not develop this way, because all their combinational drive has been translated into an equal society of perfect individuals within the limitations and attributes they have. The original DNA manipulators did not know this, and did it unaware. In turn, the Ler have influenced mainstream humanity by social feedback into a similar, but artificial, state. On the other hand
, the Klesh, isolated from both by accident, and later deliberately so by me, are far into large-scale integration.

  —But the races detest one another!

  Never mind what they say. It’s what they do. They react to one another in well-defined patterns. These patterns are the precursors to the large-scale integrations necessary to attain an awareness like mine.

  Or, become the host for one.

  Just so. To one other point, the Klesh are reachable, and many of them exhibit threshold sensitivity. Cretus, for example, although it was his forebears who first caught my attention. I was almost too late.

  Cretus fought you . . .

  Some of that. He had his own ideas, as well . . . at the least, he set up conditions where I could implant remote sensors on Monsalvat, and prevent things from falling back further. It costs me a great deal to maintain those sensors there; they are like myself, not completely material, although they seem so at your perceptual level.

  A Cretus part of him said, Protes.

  Correct. The word itself is from an ancient Human word, protean. That is why they could never discover how Protes communicated. They don’t; they are parts of me. There is no waveform between them, but a continuous state of being.

  Protes were before Cretus.

  And I am a creature of Time. I planted them before Cretus, so they would be there to use after him. It was both the most I could do, and the only thing I could do approaching direct intervention.

  That’s the best you can do in the material universe.

  It’s the only stable form I can attain in the material universe.

  He would have asked it more, thinking to let it ramble and reveal itself; he knew it was nearby, near enough to come within range of the weapons of Thlecsne Ishcht, whatever they were. But suddenly the perceptual universe he was sharing with the entity vanished. It did not fade out, or withdraw; it was shut off, switched off. And he had lost contact with his dim outside reference as well! He was walled up in Limbo, a nowhere, a no when.